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June 22, 2011 at 08:00 PM
The Government Employees Health Association (GEHA) will be offering Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) coverage for lower rates starting July 1.
GEHA, Lee’s Summit, Mo., expects to leave PCIP rates alone in about 6 states and jurisdictions with PCIP rates that are comparable to private-market rates but lower prices in about two dozen other states, officials say.
GEHA will hold an online chat to review the changes, which are set to take effect July 1, at 1 p.m. EDT June 28, at http://www.pciplan.com
The host of the chat will be Richard Popper, director of insurance programs at the Center for Consumer Information & Insurance Oversight (CCIIO).
The CCIIO is the arm of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that administers many of the programs created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA).
PCIP
The PCIP provisions of PPACA were supposed to provide immediate relief for uninsured people with health problems, to help fill the gap between the date PPACA was signed in March 2010 until the date when insurers started selling subsidized coverage on a guaranteed issue, mostly community-rated basis in 2014.
PCIP provides comprehensive health coverage for people who have a hard time qualifying to buy ordinary individual commercial health coverage.
Eligibility is not based on income, and the risk pools cannot charge higher rates for people with more severe health problems.
Congress let states choose between running PCIP risk pools themselves or letting HHS provide PCIP risk pool services for their residents.
HHS now provides PCIP services in the District of Columbia and 24 states: Alabama, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, North Dakota, Nebraska, Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming.
